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Mac Client future?

I'm afraid that, after recent layoffs, Mac client will never reach "final" stage of developement. Furthermore, we can forget about fixing memory leak issue. There will be only day to day maintenance, nothing more, and that won't help for client crashing every 15 minutes.

I'm afraid that, after recent layoffs, Mac client will never reach "final" stage of developement. Furthermore, we can forget about fixing memory leak issue. There will be only day to day maintenance, nothing more, and that won't help for client crashing every 15 minutes.

I doubt the two are even vaguely related.

Even at the peak of employment, during the Riders of Rohan development (long before Helm's Deep) the "support" of the Mac Client was just as it is now.

My point was, that if they couldn't do this when company was at full swing, then they certainly won't do it now. Waiting for better client, fixing lags, crashes etc. is hopeless. I've cancelled my sub and first time since 2008 I'm thinking about uninstalling LOTRO...

My point was, that if they couldn't do this when company was at full swing, then they certainly won't do it now. Waiting for better client, fixing lags, crashes etc. is hopeless. I've cancelled my sub and first time since 2008 I'm thinking about uninstalling LOTRO...

My personal opinion.

I got the impression the Mac client is a fixed budget feature. A pot of dollars and staff hours was assigned this job done. When the resources were used up. We got what ever functionality is completed. Support since the time is very small. The recent reduction in staff is not going to change the very small support level.

We have three kinds of software projects where I work as a software developer:

1) High priority work. We get all the resources and time we need to get it done with all the bells and whistles. Sometimes this results in an incomplete delivery that we polish steadily.

2) Fixed budget work. We do as much as we can with the budget. The feature is released as is. There is little to no support.

3) Do when we have time available. Some of the finished category 2 features will be on this list for further polishing along with the features that management does not care if they get far enough along to deliver to the customer. They exist so they are not absorbing dollars for our pay while watching you tube videos because everything is done.

Some of the features where I work that are part of category 3 are "Labor of Love" features. One or more developers has taken this feature under their wing as a personal extra assignment. The hours put in are mostly unpaid. Get an hour for lunch.. Gobble it in 10 minutes. Spend 50 minutes a day working on it. Leave one hour later four days a week.

Last edited by Yula_the_Mighty; Feb 16 2014 at 12:01 PM.

Unless stated otherwise, all content in this post is My Personal Opinion.

MY personal theory concerning the Mac Client has always been -- it was/is a contract job. And clearly a "one-shot, fixed fee" one at that.

Mac programming is philsophically different from PC programming. "The Apple Way" is a way of programming that goes beyond the fact that there are significantly different APIs involved, but the overall way in which an "Application" is packaged, where files are located and similar things.

This is to say, that, you need individuals with expertise in "the Apple Way." How many? One, two, many? While "cross platform" development tools exist, they "stop short" of "Packaging."
And, clearly, the Mac Client and the PC Client have different packaging -- i.e. the files are stored in different location and under similar but different file structures.
(And it was quite obvious early on that the "coders" involved in the Mac Client had poor backgrounds with OSX -- the use of the backslash in file paths was a tip-off.)

That I am aware of, there is a significant "dividing line" within Turbine between "content providers" (i.e. the Devs) and the "Technical providers." While not unusual for companies to have "engineering" and "content" (my made-up names) "divisions," that divide is "more visible" at Turbine simply because the "Technical folks" are not "Devs" and so therefore we have ZERO communication with them. Bug reports and Tickets feed into a filtering system which further isolates "Engineering" from the "users."

When the Mac Client was released in the Early Riders of Rohan Beta, there was one "blue-name" who communicated in the Bullroarer Mac forum. Several bugs were acknowledged and fixed as a result of that. However, with either the second or third build, (I forget which), that communication ceased; and we basically moved into the mode which we have today.

I have often wondered how much "thought" went into the Mac Client, vs -- "Since we're converting from Microsoft DX to OpenGL, the Mac Client is "easy, peasy."

LOTRO and DDO shared the same Mac Client, and ultimately, the PC Client was modified to use the new Launcher developed for the Mac Client.
I have no idea if a Mac Client exists for Acheron's' Call or Infinite Chaos... or for any other WBEI game. The WB store lists zero games for the Mac, but 15 for the PC. (However, it does NOT list LOTRO, only Lego LOTR.

... and looking at the WBIE site, it is obvious that "on-line gaming" has no part in their strategy - all the other "modes" are singled out, interesting.

Bluntly there is no future for the Mac client and as Valamar says, since closed beta, there was non despite the bluster in the (one & only) interview with the Mac press at time of launch from Turbine.

it still makes me cringe to re-read that TUAW article now with Greg Alexander (VP of Product Development) and Kate Paiz (Executive Producer) which was published at the time of launch at the end of October 2012, of the the then Mac beta client (becoming release apparently with no further development in early 2013) From that we are told on the Mac port;

Turbine first considered bringing Lord of the Rings Online to Mac back when the game went free-to-play, said Alexander, but the reason it took so long was because the company decided to build a native port for the game rather than depend on emulation or other similar methods. "Trying to outsource the task just didn't make sense," said Alexander.

So either it was developed in-house or a Mac developer contracted in. Given the specialist nature of a native OS X port I would surmise the second.

I must say that the decision to build a native port was a commendable one. This at a time when many others had gone down the emulation route via Wine etc. which can offer a decent experience but will always suffer the limitations of emulation. My feeling is that decision was made at a time when there was still some commitment to a long-term vision and corporate commitment to that.

If we take the quote as an accurate timeline then the earliest date for a start on the Mac port process was September 2010. It was released in October 2012. Two years maximum period.

Kate Paiz is the executive producer of the game, and she said that because the Mac client is native, it'll be the exact same game on the Mac as it is on the PC. "It'll all just work natively," she told TUAW. "The Mac stuff will work through the same patcher." The Mac game itself won't have any extra features or experiences exclusive to the Mac, but Paiz said the team always tries to figure out how to best welcome new players, and was thinking about the Mac client even while developing the game's latest expansion, Riders of Rohan, released a few weeks ago.

"exact same game on the Mac as it is on the PC." really? Over half the Graphics settings do not function in the Mac client compared to the PC one from closed beta to date. Think that says it all really.

And if they really wanted to truly consider 'how to best welcome new players' they would have properly advertised the Mac client (hardly anything at the time; one Mac article a few tiny generic advertisements on seedy sites...) and more importantly, a Mac client available for download from the LOTRO official site which actually worked! Since they switched to the current mess in early 2013 many potential Mac players can not even get it to work (due to it requiring Java not included by default on Macs for 2 years or so)

There is some big irony that the best advertising and download option is via Steam which incidentally still remains the only play to find any form of System requirements for Mac LOTRO. This type of pathetic attention to detail for the Mac client just reinforces the impression of 'get it out the door in whatever form as we have spent the money and don't commit any more time, care or attention to it other than the barest minimum to keep the Launcher working for updates"

I saw Valamar's plea for any sort of official Mac System Requirement in the recent post regarding the update to the PC one. Not even a response from Sapience. Quite unbelievably rude let alone complacent.

The current launch of the game will be as a beta client, downloadable directly from Turbine that will simply sign into the game's live servers. A closed beta has been active for a few months, so this is essentially an open beta period starting now. Turbine expects to maintain and update that client over time, fixing any problems that users have.

Let me repeat that, "Turbine expects to maintain and update that client over time, fixing any problems that users have."

Considering where we stand now 18 months after launch this simply leaves me speechless.

But Turbine is expecting both to see current players excited to run the game natively on their favorite computers, and new players interested in a free-to-play experience on OS X. "There haven't been a lot of MMOs or free-to-play games on the Mac yet, which we think is an opportunity, " said Alexander. "We're hopeful we're going to get lots of new players." And Paiz said that Turbine is happy to have Mac users on board. "We're very excited to welcome the Mac community firsthand ... We'd like to see what this IP and this game means to them personally."

How did they ever think that they could "get lots of new players" or truly "We're very excited to welcome the Mac community firsthand" as Paiz was quoted with Little to no advertising to the Mac market, reaching out to the Mac gaming press and community? Offer no Mac specific technical support input to the Mac Tech Support forum ever. The Sticking of a few player created help threads and being told to submit tickets is all we ever got. Some welcome.

I never expected to have regular dedicated CS or TS dialogue in the Mac Tech Support forum but when, after hundreds of threads by budding Mac users have issue after issue even now; Nothing. Not even a Welcome from a CM let alone from the Exec. Producer. The only official post is a rest of a thread by a player dated May 30 2007 about how to submit a support ticket.

Yes, as Mirthgar has said in the PC forum this is not the best place to get official TS help. However, just take a quick look to compare the non existent dialogue with the community on technical or just general issues here and the Blizzard Mac TS forum section here.

Note the number of blue responses even on just the first page. Now go and find just one on this entire forum section...

Blizzard offer full support ticket service too. But that does not mean they ignore the front line of the Mac player base seeking information via their official forum. No, Turbine is not Blizzard but the comparison is so blindingly cruel it rams home the attitude right from the get go of corporate attitude to their player base; despite all the (now seemingly hollow) words in that enthusiastically worded article at launch.

There is little further to say suffice to say their words have not been backed up with actions. Quite the reverse in fact. Complacency is the only view of where we stand now.

Final thing I will say (and said before) without the sterling efforts of Valamar (and somewhat myself in the past before I could not stomach it anymore) many, many more potential Mac LOTRO players would have given up at not even being able to download the Mac client form Turbine's own LOTRO site. Let alone appallingly shoddy mistakes in the Mac client which we endeavoured to workaround.

I love this IP. Tolkien provided us with a magical world and Turbine brought much which brought that alive for gamers in LOTRO. However the exciting promises of a native Mac port and ongoing development have evaporated into the grime reality of a corporate monetised showcase driven over the passionate commitment of developer and community aspiration.

In the end we have a Mac client that does work in a fashion at least and for those that persisted beyond the hurdles left in place, a way to play LOTRO on their Mac. There is that at least. But for me the broken promises, lack of any real interest or even simple dialogue led me to take the only option left which was to walk away. That was sad for me and sad for a game with so much promise and hope.

There is hope for use Mac gamers though down other paths. I am currently beta testing the Mac client for Elder Scrolls Online as an MMO in development for seven years and with a Lead Mac Developer in place for four of those years within the team creating a native Mac client.

I can say from the first beta testing weekend when the Mac client was available, the Mac game play was almost on par with the PC client which was a really pleasant surprise. This shows it can be done with the right corporate philosophy and vision which gives me hope for the future of Mac gaming.

If we take the quote as an accurate timeline then the earliest date for a start on the Mac port process was September 2010. It was released in October 2012. Two years maximum period.

Hmmmm... WB acquired Turbine 20 April 2010.

Originally Posted by Toddlepip

"exact same game on the Mac as it is on the PC." really? Over half the Graphics settings do not function in the Mac client compared to the PC one from closed beta to date. Think that says it all really.

I have to take exception to this -- the reason that over half of the Graphics settings do not function is actually quite simple -- OpenGL vs DX -- they are simply not relevant to the Mac Client.

Originally Posted by Toddlepip

And if they really wanted to truly consider 'how to best welcome new players' they would have properly advertised the Mac client (hardly anything at the time; one Mac article a few tiny generic advertisements on seedy sites...) and more importantly, a Mac client available for download from the LOTRO official site which actually worked! Since they switched to the current mess in early 2013 many potential Mac players can not even get it to work (due to it requiring Java not included by default on Macs for 2 years or so)

This is a case where giving the Mac Client the "same treatment as the PC" actually hurts the Mac Client. Basically the PC download uses a torrent based system PMB. This DOES work well for PC users for several reasons, not the least of which being that Mac Users know more about PMB and Torrents than PC users do! But, more importantly, there are far fewer POTENTIAL seed sites (i.e. existing Mac Players) even if those folks did allow PMB to run.

Today, both the Happy Cloud mechanism (Play Instantly) and the Steam mechanism work well for both Mac and PC.

Originally Posted by Toddlepip

This shows it can be done with the right corporate philosophy and vision which gives me hope for the future of Mac gaming.

This is really the crux of the matter -- "It's the vision thing." Turbine is NOT the same company it was when purchased by WBIE back in April of 2010.

Professionally, I've been down this exact same road twice before -- A DEC Alpha user when Compaq purchased DEC, and a Compaq Alpha user when HP purchased Compaq.

Sadly, the purpose in all 3 acquisitions had nothing to do with the technologies available. The sole purpose was the acquisition of "Customers" and "Intellectual Property."

In acquiring Turbine, WB acquired the only Intellectual Property Licenses for Tolkien's work which they did not previously have. Today, ALL licenses for Tolkien's IP are held by WB in one division or another. Obviously, "the suits" believe(d) that this gives them a "strong hand" in negotiating with Saul Zaentz Middle Earth Enterprises and ultimately with Christopher Tolkien.

From all available information, it appears that the primary thrust of this acquisition was in support of the Warner Brothers "gaming" operations -- i.e. Casinos. Hence the current fight with Christopher Tolkien over WB's "right" to create LOTR Slot Machines. (I have no idea if this is still in progress or has been settled "out of court" -- there has been no news since the counter-suit filed by WB back in January of 2013.) Oh well...

Keep in mind Tolkien himself sold ALL rights to LOTR back in the late 1960s to some dude in California name of Saul Zaentz. His company, now doing business as "Tolkien Enterprises" is the entity who has licensed the IP to Warner Brothers. Tolkien is reported to have said at the time of the signing -- "I'll sign this, they won't ever make money from it because it's impossible, and I'll get the money anyway." Christopher Tolkien's lawsuits have all be about the fact that his father signed away ALL RIGHTS to LOTR, and he saw the billions in profits that New Line generated from Jackson's films.... and as they say, the rest is history.

One last comment, DDO does have "the same" Mac client as does LOTRO. It does not appear to have many of the same problems of the LOTRO client, I would assume simply because DDO is a much less demanding game "graphically." (The DDO client is only 7Gb patched vs 23GB for the Mac Client!)

Yes but the quote refers to 'launch' of F2P which was in September 2010 in the US, not from acquisition.

I have to take exception to this -- the reason that over half of the Graphics settings do not function is actually quite simple -- OpenGL vs DX -- they are simply not relevant to the Mac Client.

You can take exception but the bare fact is the Mac client includes a lot of Graphics settings that simply do not work for whatever reason. To leave in non-functioning settings just reflects the poor care to detail in any case. As it confuses people because they generally expect switches to do something.

In fact a lot of those graphical settings could be supported as is shown in ESO where the current Mac beta client supports all those the PC version does. Where the difference is OpenGL v DX9/10/11 it uses the equivalent. Incidentally it is probably not so far away in actual OpenGL version support as LOTRO. The big difference is in the actual development and commitment to the process within ZOS.

This is a case where giving the Mac Client the "same treatment as the PC" actually hurts the Mac Client. Basically the PC download uses a torrent based system PMB. This DOES work well for PC users for several reasons, not the least of which being that Mac Users know more about PMB and Torrents than PC users do! But, more importantly, there are far fewer POTENTIAL seed sites (i.e. existing Mac Players) even if those folks did allow PMB to run.

Today, both the Happy Cloud mechanism (Play Instantly) and the Steam mechanism work well for both Mac and PC.

You know, I just saw a Twitter post that actually shocked me enough to go and check the Mac LOTRO download from the official LOTRO site where it is still displayed prominently. And yes, they are still using a download client based on Pando media Booster. From;

Why is that shocking? Because, according to WikipediaPando shut down its servers and ceased business on August 31, 2013.

Even the (buggy as ever) LOTRO-Live-multilang launcher states " The Lord of the Rings Online Downloader is powered by Pando Media Booster"

It went on to install PMB onto my Mac with a PandoWebPlugin.plugin and System preferences panel.

Now, it did start downloading (Torrent with P2P) and checking on T&S took me to a ReloadedTech web site
Which appears to now run the PMB nothing is mentioned at all on the launcher which has not changed since it was first used. And certainly no information on just how the LOTRO Mac client (PC also I guess?) is downloaded.

They have a link still to the page for PMB (link above to the RT PMB info & help)

Ironically LoL also uses PMB and forums full of viruses on top of the usual PMB hate. But this is no reason why Turbine have done nothing to sort out the official Mac LOTRO download on their site which has always been buggy, requires java etc. and now a potential source of viruses. Whether players can download it from Steam is imatterial to this situation.

This virus 'may' not be a direct to OS X but I have no way to know that and it's rather besides the point.

Now I have digressed rather but it is just another symptom of the disease we talk about.

This is really the crux of the matter -- "It's the vision thing." Turbine is NOT the same company it was when purchased by WBIE back in April of 2010.

Professionally, I've been down this exact same road twice before -- A DEC Alpha user when Compaq purchased DEC, and a Compaq Alpha user when HP purchased Compaq.

Sadly, the purpose in all 3 acquisitions had nothing to do with the technologies available. The sole purpose was the acquisition of "Customers" and "Intellectual Property."

In acquiring Turbine, WB acquired the only Intellectual Property Licenses for Tolkien's work which they did not previously have. Today, ALL licenses for Tolkien's IP are held by WB in one division or another. Obviously, "the suits" believe(d) that this gives them a "strong hand" in negotiating with Saul Zaentz Middle Earth Enterprises and ultimately with Christopher Tolkien.

From all available information, it appears that the primary thrust of this acquisition was in support of the Warner Brothers "gaming" operations -- i.e. Casinos. Hence the current fight with Christopher Tolkien over WB's "right" to create LOTR Slot Machines. (I have no idea if this is still in progress or has been settled "out of court" -- there has been no news since the counter-suit filed by WB back in January of 2013.) Oh well...

Keep in mind Tolkien himself sold ALL rights to LOTR back in the late 1960s to some dude in California name of Saul Zaentz. His company, now doing business as "Tolkien Enterprises" is the entity who has licensed the IP to Warner Brothers. Tolkien is reported to have said at the time of the signing -- "I'll sign this, they won't ever make money from it because it's impossible, and I'll get the money anyway." Christopher Tolkien's lawsuits have all be about the fact that his father signed away ALL RIGHTS to LOTR, and he saw the billions in profits that New Line generated from Jackson's films.... and as they say, the rest is history.

One last comment, DDO does have "the same" Mac client as does LOTRO. It does not appear to have many of the same problems of the LOTRO client, I would assume simply because DDO is a much less demanding game "graphically." (The DDO client is only 7Gb patched vs 23GB for the Mac Client!)

You have summarised very well the corporate angle here. I would push it one stage further however. I am by nature not cynical but something said on the forums recently stuck in my mind. They made the point that WB could well have secured the extended IP rights for LOTRO until 2017; not to continue developing it further but to strategically prevent others from obtaining the rights to do so. In the light of the subsequent layoffs it struck home and rather reflects the type of mindset you laid out.

p.s. if you did not do so after downloading the Mac client from the LOTRO site via PMB, you can uninstall it from OS X using the instructions here.